Apple Removes Scam App That Led to Hijacked Facebook Ad Accounts
Apple has removed an app that it was unknowingly hosting on the App Store that scammed Facebook advertisers and led hackers to use advertisers' ad budgets to run possibly malicious ads on Facebook's platforms, Business Insider reports.
The app previously ranked highly on the App Store when searching for "Facebook ads manager," the app used by advertisers to control their presence and ads they're running on the Facebook platform. The app presented itself as the legitimate ads manager for Facebook but was actually a backdoor that let hackers gain access to an account. One employee of an ad agency told Insider they were locked out of their account within just 10 minutes of downloading and logging into the app from Apple's App Store.
Apple said that the app was originally submitted to the App Store as a simple document manager with no ties or functionality to the Facebook platform. Apple claimed in a statement to Insider that the app turned malicious after it was approved for the company's platform. Facebook flagged the app to Apple in mid-July, but only after Insider's request for comment to the Cupertino tech giant was the app removed from the platform.
Apple proudly states that the App Store is "a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps," with apps being held to the "highest standards for privacy, security, and content." Apple screens all apps before they're presented for download on the App Store. According to the company, over 250,000 apps were rejected for the App Store last year for violating privacy guidelines, with an even larger 1 million apps rejected for possibly harmful and unsafe content.
Despite Apple's efforts, scam apps have remained a problem for the platform. A study last year found that 2% of the top 1000 top paid apps on the App Store at the time were scam apps, with those apps reportedly earning over $1 million in revenue. In a separate instance, a fake bitcoin app scammed its way to gain over $610,000 after being on Apple's platform.
Popular Stories
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Apple today released new firmware designed for the AirPods Pro 3 and the prior-generation AirPods Pro 2. The AirPods Pro 3 firmware is 8B30, up from 8B25, while the AirPods Pro 2 firmware is 8B28, up from 8B21.
There's no word on what's include in the updated firmware, but the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 are getting expanded support for Live Translation in the European Union in iOS...
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28.
The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
The AirTag 2 will include a handful of new features that will improve tracking capabilities, according to a new report from Macworld. The site says that it was able to access an internal build of iOS 26, which includes references to multiple unreleased products.
Here's what's supposedly coming:
An improved pairing process, though no details were provided. AirTag pairing is already...
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings >...
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Macworld claims to have access to an ...
